Tag: BBC2

An accident aboard the Earth-to-Mars supply freighter Daedalus fires the ship’s engines long before they should, blasting the ship off-course. Its crew of two is doomed: while they’re in no danger of hitting anything, they’ll run out of air eventually. Even though the crew is still in contact, they’ve all but been declared dead already. The Star Cops begin an investigation, but Nathan has a distraction of his own: his girlfriend on Earth has been brutally murdered. When he arrives to personally assist in the investigation, he finds they he’s being treated as a suspect in the crime. This leaves David to spearhead the Daedalus investigation, during the course of which he makes a discovery that could save the crew’s lives: experimental cryogenic equipment is stored about the Daedalus that could be used to put the crew into hibernation, while there’s just enough fuel to put the Daedalus on a long course back home…if the airlocks are opened selectively. The problem is that it’ll take eight years for Daedalus to reach home, and until then nobody will know if the crew survived or not. And on Earth, Nathan receives a message stating that his girlfriend was but the first victim – and that he will be the next to die.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Christopher Baker
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Gennie Nevinson (Lee Jones), Sian Webber (Corman), Alan Downer (Paton), Sean Scanlan (Fox), Carmen Gomez (Gina), Benny Young (John Smith), Deborah Manship (Traffic Controller), Richard Ireson (Mike), Rosie Kerslake (Lara)

Notes: The last-ditch maneuver to save the Daedalus is based on a real scientific principle called a “free return trajectory”, a save-our-skins option that involves using the available fuel and possibly gravity assists from celestial bodies to put a spacecraft on track to return home with a minimum expenditure of resources. A free return trajectory often assumes that available fuel is at a minimum, due to whatever has forced mission planners to consider a free return trajectory in the first place. Apollo 13’s crew was successfully returned to Earth in 1970 by use of a free return trajectory that involved swinging around the moon.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Spring and Theroux are summoned to Moonbase 9, a high-security-clearance facility whose chief scientist, Michael Chandri, claims to have invented a means of nearly foolproof intelligence-gathering. His invention could come in particularly handy in the investigation of recent incidents of computer failures that have had tragic results: the computer controlling the automatic functions at a chemical plant fails, causing a massive explosion, and the traffic computer governing the subway tunnel under the English Channel allows a tragic collision. In the meantime, Spring finds himself having to clean house as he begins a purge of Star Cops with questionable associations leaving them open to corruption. Some of them are happy to make their exit, but headstrong Pal Kenzy fights Spring every step of the way and even promises retribution. Theroux gets a promotion – and his new stripe comes with the responsibility of personally handling the rest of the dismissals – while Colin Devis, the detective Spring recruited from Earth, is assigned the task of procuring new weapons for the Star Cops, a job which seems to lead to Kenzy once again. Fearing that he’s losing his touch, Spring is vexed by the computer failures, and by the apparent inability of Chandri to find the cause of the problem with the vast intelligence-gathering apparatus at his disposal.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Christopher Baker
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), David John Pope (Michael Chandri), Trevor Butler (Leo), Thomas Coulthard (Ben), Tara Ward (Shuttle Hostess), Peter Quince (Shift Foreman), Peter Glancy (Process Operator)

Notes: This episode anticipates computer viruses and worms by several years, though the concept was already in circulation in 1987, even if it wasn’t necessarily the real day-to-day issue that it is now. Writer Chris Boucher also incorporated the element of widespread computer control causing catastrophes into his 1979 Blake’s 7 season finale, Star One.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Spring goes to pay a visit to Space Station Ronald Reagan, operated by the United States, to introduce himself and recruit a new American Star Cop to replace the disgraced Hubble; instead, he finds himself on the defensive as the station’s commander complains bitterly about the dismissal of Hubble from the Star Cops – and the fact that Theroux is still in uniform. Pal Kenzy, fresh from writing her own ticket to reinstatement as a Star Cop following the lunar shuttle hijacking rescue, is frustrated to find that her duties amount to little more than a dispatcher. She manages to annoy an American woman calling to report that her brother has gone missing from Space Station Ronald Reagan, whose crew insists that he was never even aboard. Kenzy goes to pay an unannounced visit to Station Reagan, which puts Spring on the spot. Having already been refused a new recruit by the U.S. State Department, Spring now finds himself in the uncomfortable position of exposing an international cover-up, without backup, at an isolated outpost that’s growing more hostile to his presence with each passing second.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Jonathan Adams (Alexander Krivenko), Daniel Benzali (Commander Griffin), Marlena Mackey (Dilly Goodman), Robert Jezek (Pete Lennox), Russell Wootton (Marty), Angela Crow (Lauter), Morgan Deare (Harvey Goodman), Shope Shodeinde (Receptionist)

Notes: Trivial Games may be unique in that it features the only cast crossover between Star Cops and Star Trek: The Next Generation – Brazilian-born actor Daniel Benzali would go on to play a small role as a gruff surgeon who looked for things to make Picard’s artificial heart go in 1989’s Samaritan Snare; he has also appeared in the ’90s revival of The Outer Limits, Beauty & The Beast, The X-Files and Jericho, among other shows filmed on both sides of the Atlantic. Director Graeme Harper, who had already made a mark on Doctor Who behind the cameras of Peter Davison’s farewell story Caves Of Androzani, directs his first Star Cops episode here; as with his Doctor Who stint, he introduced a change in style by lowering the lighting (in some cases to pitch blackness as Spring snoops around the American space station). Harper would go on to a well-respected directing career that would see him returning to the revived Doctor Who series in 2006.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Literally moments after the Star Cops’ lunar base is put on maximum alert due to the failed launch (and near-spill) of nuclear radiation at the nearby launch pad, Spring is summoned by the personnel division on Earth, with orders to report to Earth for scheduled leave time…regardless of the emergency. Theroux heads up the investigation into the accident while Spring heads home, but since the death of his girlfriend, Spring has found little comfort on Earth. He finds even less when he has to fend off an attacker – but not before the man drugs him – and is then charged with the man’s murder. It turns out that Spring’s assailant is an Italian with mob ties, recently deported back to Earth from the moonbase courtesy of the Star Cops. Spring is swiftly relieved of duty as Kenzy and Devis investigate a commercial moon mining operation that may have its own ties to the Mafia…and to a black market trade in nucelar-weapons-grade uranium. As for Theroux and moonbase administrator Alexander Krivenko, they seem all too ready to sit by as Spring is railroaded.

written by Philip Martin
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Jonathan Adams (Alexander Krivenko), Michael Chesden (Carlo Santanini), Susan Curnow (Marla Condarini), Stewart Guidotti (Inspector Canova), Vikki Chambers (Lina Margello), Flip Webster (Personnel Officer), Andre Winterton (Angelo Fordenone), Carl Forgione (Tour Guide)

Notes: Writer Philip Martin had already gained fame – or, depending upon whom you ask, notoriety – for his gritty, stylized BBC crime drama Gangsters, as well as his well-received Doctor Who story Vengeance On Varos, which introduced Sil, a promising new enemy for the Doctor; rather less well-received were Martin’s scripts for parts 5-8 of The Trial Of A Time Lord, which revisited Sil but confused viewers, actors and the production crew alike. This was his only Star Cops script to be filmed; a second script, Death On The Moon, was cast, costumed and rehearsed, but a crew strike at the BBC prevented filming from taking place.

LogBook entry by Earl Green